Not Set Aside but Set Apart: An Olive Garden Prayer

“O Lord, all my longing is before you;
my sighing is not hidden from you.”
Psalm 38:9 ESV

Almost eight years ago, I was sitting in the back garden, looking out upon the olive trees and soaking in the first light of the morning. I’d managed to sneak out and not wake anybody else in the house so that I could just be alone in the presence of the Lord. His love was washing over me, and yet, there was still this question that kept rising in my heart. 

“Why haven’t you opened that door, Lord?”

I found my heart hardening in distrust. I felt God needed to open this door for me to join a Christian writing community so that I could do what He had called me to. Looking around anxiously at others, for whom He had opened this door, I began to wonder, in my childish angst, if that meant He loved them more than He did me. 

Now, as I look back, I know that the door I wanted God to open wasn’t opening to me because of His love for me. In that apparent withholding, He was knocking on the door of my heart. Not to give me what I thought I needed, but to give me what I truly needed. For, it is those whom the Lord loves that He also rebukes.

Christ prays through us.

In that olive garden, Christ gave me a prayer that has been rising up in me, through the Holy Spirit’s prompting, ever since. I have continually found myself whispering this prayer, based on Psalm 86:11, into my day: “Teach me oh Lord to walk in the light of your truth, give me an undivided heart that I may fear Your Name above all else.” This prayer has been gently bearing the fruit for which it was sent.

Four months after that morning in the olive garden, Christ led me to declare myself dead to sin and alive to Him. At my baptism, I promised Him publicly that I would follow Him anywhere He called me. Little did I know what He would ask of me.

Christ set me apart to give me Himself.

It began with a call to be set apart at my church. However, if I had let my TCK life of repeated moves teach me anything, it was how to be a chameleon: how to change myself so as not to stick out like a sore thumb. I’d become adept at quietly observing those around me and adapting my behavior and appearance accordingly. I did not want to be set apart.

I wanted to belong to the in-crowd, not the out-crowd. But God wanted to humble and free me from a desire that had been crushing and caging me. 

As I began to notice that those who were unable to hide their weakness and need for Jesus were part of the out-crowd, God began uncovering my own weakness and need for Him in fresh new ways. It was then that I realized that more than wanting to belong to the in-crowd, I wanted to belong and draw near to Him.

God is using my past painful experiences for good.

Now, I see how God has been using the pain of each setting apart to reveal His heart of compassion in and through me. When my weakness and need made me stick out at my church, I met Christ’s love and mercy for me in deeper ways as He prompted me to stand in the truth of His Word. I could no longer stay silent, and I obeyed His call to speak up, prepared to lose everything. Yet, then I discovered, like the apostle Paul, that our loss is but eternal gain, as God’s healing began to flood into the wounds of my past.

More recently, my experiences of being set apart, as an ATCK with no family of my own nearby, compelled me to walk up to a stranger. He was sitting alone at the camping ground I was visiting with my husband and kids. I struck up a conversation with him because I saw how lonely he looked, with no one to talk to, unlike all of us around him who were traveling with family or friends. 

Beautifully, as we chatted, I found God meeting me in my own longing for “home” as the man shared about his trip to my passport country 32 years earlier and how much it had blessed him. I then also recalled what a blessing his native country had been to me as an ATCK and au pair. We also shared a number of other things in common. I watched God bind our hearts together in His compassion and in a way only He could.

As He is, so also are we in this world.

In giving me this fresh understanding of His compassion unfolding in the pain of each setting apart, God has been answering the prayer that He began praying through me in that olive garden. He has been busy showing me what living in the light of His truth and with an undivided heart truly looks like: “… as He is so also are we in this world” (1 John 4:17 ESV).

Jesus walked outside of the camp to become of no reputation, sitting and breaking bread with those who couldn’t hide their weakness and need for Him. And He compels us to follow in His footsteps as He fixes our eyes on Him and the heavenly reward awaiting us (Heb. 13:13–14). By God’s grace, I am now coming to know that heavenly reward in sweet new ways as I lose my life in this world to find it in Him and His Kingdom, ever unfolding.

God is changing my mind and healing my heart to reveal His undivided heart.

When God eventually asked me to leave my local church, He opened doors in my local community to begin sharing my faith freely in new and life-giving ways. Through the past almost seven years, He has stretched and grown my heart and given me such sweet moments of joy as I have witnessed prodigal and seeking hearts around me so hungry and thirsty for His word and touch.

I now realize, though, that every time hearts around me have opened up, my own heart has also been opened up to receive Jesus. Where I have wanted to lunge in and correct and rebuke people in their weakness and need, He has called me to be silent and pray instead. He has corrected and rebuked me for my lack of love and faith.

He has led me to share about recent situations where He has been changing my mind and behavior to align with His. Through sharing my stories, I have watched Him move in the hearts of those before me, and in my own, in ways only He can. He has continually knit us together in His love, revealing His undivided heart amongst us, binding us together as one.

My experiences remind me so much of an Old Testament promise:

“If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land” (2 Chr. 7:14 ESV, emphasis added).

Truly, it is as I am learning, by God’s grace, to humble myself in this way that I am watching Him heal those around me too. They are coming to taste the freedom of repentance as I do so myself.

God’s Word has power.

Now I know God truly means what He says when He speaks of the seal of His Holy Spirit (Eph. 1:13–14) and generational blessings, like Psalm 102:28:

“The children of your servants shall dwell secure; their offspring shall be established before you” (ESV).

In giving me the very same promises He once gave my mum, when she still walked this earth, to now pray over myself and my loved ones, He is proving His steadfast love and faithfulness to me.

Slowly and surely, His Word is reaping beautiful fruit. I am “having the eyes of [my heart] enlightened, that [I] may know what is the hope to which he has called [me], what are the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints” (Eph. 1:18 ESV). I am daily experiencing the truth that “this is eternal life, that they know [the Father], the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom [He has] sent.” (John 17:3 ESV, emphasis added). 

Christ does not set us aside, but apart, unto Him and His purposes to bless us.

My experiences since leaving my church continually remind me of Matthew 25:40:  

“The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me’” (NIV). 

As I have served seekers and prodigals around me in their weakness and need, I have found them ministering to me. They have invited me into their homes and families. They have shared their stories and listened to mine. And they have tended to, cleansed, and applied balm to my unseen wounds, revealing Christ’s compassion to me.

I now know that when God kept that door closed to me in the olive garden, when He made me stick out as a child and an adult, and when He asked me to leave what I knew to follow Him out into the unknown, He was not setting me aside. He was setting me apart to give me Himself. 

What I once pridefully saw as God withholding good from me, I now know was, and still is, Him giving me His best. The Scripture Christ first gave me to pray in that olive garden continues to bear the fruit for which it was sent:

“Teach me your way, LORD, that I may rely on your faithfulness; give me an undivided heart, that I may fear your name. I will praise you, Lord my God, with all my heart; I will glorify your name forever.” Psalm 86:11–12 NIV

All of this makes me think of a beautiful prayer Jesus prayed for us all, so long ago, in another olive garden, on the eve of His crucifixion, which also continues to bear fruit:

 “As you sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world. And for their sake I consecrate myself, that they also may be sanctified in truth.
“I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me. The glory that you have given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me.” 
John 17:18–23 ESV

What happened to that closed door I was bemoaning in that olive garden?

It opened to me, but only so I could discover that God’s way for me is so much better. I joined the writing community like I wanted to, but it ended up leaving me feeling overwhelmed. I am now a member of a much smaller online Christian writing community, which has been a much better fit for me. 

Now, years later, I am learning and growing, not just in my writing, but in my faith and in fellowship with my brothers and sisters in Christ. I am overwhelmed by God’s tender love and care for me as I now taste the fruit of all that painful, yet freeing, setting apart of His.

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